Shorten With subscription
Available in Antidote 12
The Shorten view aims to streamline your text. It reformulates each paragraph to make it shorter but doesn’t stray from the original meaning. (A constituent sentence may be made longer, but the paragraph will be shorter overall.) It’s a great tool for when you need to limit your word count. Being able to express yourself succinctly in writing is an important skill; others will be able to read your work faster and understand it better.
- When results are available, a blue dot appears beside the view in the navigation bar.
Multiple Reformulations
Antidote typically reformulates a passage a variety of ways. Shorten organizes the reformulations in the tooltip from longest to shortest and displays the most relevant first, accounting for the number and nature of the proposed changes. Each reformulation is followed in parentheses by the total reduction in words and characters. (While the word count may be higher than that of the original passage, the character count will always be lower.) You can compare different suggestions and make your choice by clicking the chevrons on either side of the active reformulation or the grey dots beneath it.
Total Reduction in Length
Antidote displays the total possible word and character counts after shortening at the bottom of the list of results (at the very bottom of the window’s right-hand panel), as well as the reduction in characters as a percentage. These numbers reflect the final length of the text should you choose to apply all the shortest reformulation options, letting you know quickly whether Shorten will sufficiently trim your text.